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North Ireland leaders may lose power
( 2002-10-10 14:34 ) (7 )

Moderate Catholic politicians said Wednesday they won't punish Sinn Fein over alleged IRA spying, meaning Northern Ireland's administration probably faces suspension by Britain next week.

Suspending the administration's powers — and putting Britain back in sole control of Northern Ireland — would buy time for the parties to negotiate a new agreement.

Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams, who heads Irish Republican Army-linked party, insisted there was no reason to take power away from local hands.

But he conceded that this week's espionage-related charges against three people, including Sinn Fein's top legislative aide, means "the damage has been done," even if the trio are eventually acquitted.

The prime ministers of Britain and Ireland, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, met in London to agree on a strategy for preventing the collapse of the Northern Ireland administration.

Cooperation between Blair and Ahern helped achieve the 1998 peace accord that created Northern Ireland's nearly 3-year-old government of British Protestants and Irish Catholics.

The coalition has already had its powers stripped three times by Britain during previous crises.

"We don't want to see suspension. But if there is not trust between the parties, then they can't work," Ahern said as he and Foreign Minister Brian Cowen arrived outside Blair's office.

"If that trust is temporarily gone, it is the obligation of the two governments to manage the situation in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland," Ahern said.

At an earlier meeting with Blair, Catholic moderates said they would not take sides in the showdown between Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists, the major Protestant party. The Ulster Unionists party declared Tuesday it would resign its posts next week unless Sinn Fein was kicked out.

Without backing from the Social Democratic and Labor Party, the largest Catholic-backed member of the coalition, any expulsion vote would fail in Northern Ireland's legislature, which requires majority backing from both sides.

"The reality is that it is no more tenable to ask the (Social Democratic party) to support an exclusion motion than it is to ask the Ulster Unionists to continue indefinitely in the institutions in these circumstances," said Social Democratic leader Mark Durkan, who is also the administration's deputy leader.

First Minister David Trimble said his Ulster Unionist Party didn't want to withdraw, a move that could make it impossible to re-form the coalition.

But in a speech to Britain's opposition Conservative Party convention, Trimble said he would be left with no choice if the Social Democratic party didn't support him. He held out hope that if Blair proposed the anti-Sinn Fein motion, Durkan could be persuaded to change his mind.

He said Sinn Fein could rejoin the coalition if the IRA, which is largely observing a 1997 truce, ceases all activities. Police have accused the outlawed group of committing a range of violent acts over the past year.

"The record shows that republicans move under pressure, so the more pressure that is exerted, the sooner they will move," Trimble said.

Police have accused Sinn Fein and the IRA of receiving troves of classified documents from a sympathetic civil servant from April 2000 to September 2001, when a supervisor allegedly caught the worker making suspicious photocopies of documents.

In raids last Friday, police allegedly found a stack of papers detailing potential IRA targets and confidential British records in the home of Denis Donaldson, Sinn Fein's senior legislative aide.

"It wouldn't matter if Denis Donaldson walked out of that prison tomorrow morning. The damage has been done," Adams said.